4 Feminist criticism

Before we extend these concepts to the realm of literary interpretation, let’s take a look at Marxism’s view of literature in general. For Marxism, literature does not exist in some timeless, aesthetic realm as an object to be passively contemplated. Rather, like all cultural manifestations, it is a product of the socioeconomic and hence ideological conditions of the time and place in which it was written, whether or not the author intended it so. Because human beings are themselves products of their socioeconomic and ide‑ ological environment, it is assumed that authors cannot help but create works that embody ideology in some form. The fact that literature grows out of and reflects real material/historical conditions creates at least two possibilities of interest to Marxist critics: (1) the literary work might tend to reinforce in the reader the ideologies it embodies, or (2) it might invite the reader to criticize the ideologies it represents. Many texts do both. And it is not merely the content of a literary work—the “action” or the theme—that carries ideology, but the form as well or, as most Marxists would argue, the form primarily. Realism, naturalism, surrealism, symbolism, romanticism, modernism, postmodernism, tragedy, comedy, satire, interior monologue, stream of conscious‑ ness, and other genres and literary devices are the means by which form is consti‑ tuted. If content is the “what” of literature, then form is the “how.” Realism, for example, gives us characters and plot as if we were looking through a window onto an actual scene taking place before our eyes. Our attention is drawn not to the nature of the words on the page but to the action those words convey. Indeed, we frequently forget about the words we’re reading and the way the narrative is structured as we “get lost” in the story. Part of the reason we don’t notice the language and structure, the form, is because the action rep‑ resented is ordered in a coherent sequence that invites us to relate to it much as we relate to the events in our own lives, and the characters it portrays are believable, much like people we might meet. So we get “pulled into” the story. In contrast, a good deal of postmodern literature (and nonrealistic, experimental literature of any kind) is written in a fragmented, surreal style that seems to defy our understanding and serves to distance or estrange us from the narrative and the characters it portrays. For some Marxists, realism is the best form for Marxist purposes because it clearly and accurately represents the real world, with all its socioeconomic ineq‑ uities and ideological contradictions, and encourages readers to see the unhappy truths about material/historical reality, for whether or not authors intend it they are bound to represent socioeconomic inequities and ideological contradictions if they accurately represent the real world. Marxist fans of realist fiction often have been inclined to reject nonrealistic, experimental fiction for being inacces‑ sible to the majority of readers and for being too exclusively concerned with the

inner workings of an individual mind rather than with the individual’s relation‑ ship to society. However, many Marxists value nonrealistic, experimental fiction because the fragmentation of experience it represents and the estrangement the reader often experiences constitute a critique of the fragmented world and the alienated human beings produced by capitalism in today’s world. To see how form affects our understanding of content (or how form is a kind of content), let’s take another brief look at Death of a Salesman. As we have seen, the play has a strong Marxist component in that it invites us to condemn the capitalist exploitation Willy suffers at the hands of his employer, and it shows us the contradictions inherent in capitalist ideology, which promotes the interests of big business at the expense of the “little man” who has “bought into” capi‑ talist values. However, for many Marxists, this anticapitalist theme is severely undermined by the fact that the play is written in the form of a tragedy. You will recall that tragedy portrays the ruin of an individual human being due to some character flaw—usually hubris, or excessive pride—in that individual’s personal makeup. The tragic form of Death of a Salesman thus encourages us to focus primarily on the character flaws in Willy as an individual rather than on the society that helped produce those flaws, and we are thus led to overlook the negative influence of the capitalist ideology that is, at bottom, responsible for all the action in the play. Although Marxists have long disagreed about what kinds of works are most useful in promoting social awareness and positive political change, many today believe that even those literary works that reinforce capitalist, imperialist, or other classist values are useful in that they can show us how these ideologies work to seduce or coerce us into collusion with their repressive ideological agen‑ das. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), for example, may be said to reinforce classist values to the extent that it portrays those born into the upper class—for example, Alphonse Frankenstein, Elizabeth Lavenza, and the De Laceys—as morally and intellectually superior to those below them on the social scale. Characters at the bottom of the social ladder, on the other hand, are often depicted as rude, insensitive, and easily incensed to mob behavior. In contrast, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) undermines classist values by illustrating the injustices suffered under the class system imposed by American capitalism in the early 1940s. In addition, by revealing the ways in which religion and escapist movies harm the poor by encouraging them to ignore the harsh realities of their lives, rather than organize politically and fight collectively for their fair share of the pie, this novel can be said to have a Marxist agenda.